Oyster Tonging

Oysters were originally harvested by the Powhatan or colonists by wading into the water and picking them up off the oyster bar, but as more people ate oysters, boats were needed to collect them from bars farther out into the rivers and the Bay. Hand tongs were developed to gather oysters from a boat. These long, scissor-like tools had metal rakes on the ends, and a waterman standing on the side of his boat opened the tongs, reached to the bottom, closed them to scoop oysters between the rakes, then lifted them aboard and dumped the catch onto the culling board. In water that might be fifteen or more feet deep, the tongs were very long, heavy, and hard to manage. The catch was then sorted, and because oysters sometimes grew on each other, large and small, the waterman used a culling hammer to separate individual oysters. The hammer handle also had a measuring gauge, and any oyster smaller than three inches had to be returned to the oyster bed. Empty shells were also returned because baby oysters attached to larger shell as they grew, and anything else brought up was thrown back into the water. Hand tonging was hard, slow work, and sometimes each lick of the tongs brought up only a few oysters, yet most of the Chesapeake oyster harvest was taken with hand tongs.

Deltaville, Virginia · United States